There was a silence between them as Maddie returned to the table with all the pens she had been able to gather with two fists, deposited them, and went off to retrieve the rest, much to the disapproval of the waitress.
“Spares,” she said by way of explanation.
“I can’t bear to think of you feeling so desolate,” Frasier said, mustering a smile to cheer both of them. “And yet now suddenly here you are, and you look so full of life and promise,” he continued as Maddie began to arrange the pens into color groupings. “And although I know that we know each other very little in reality, I can promise you that there aren’t many people in the world who are more pleased to see you that way than I am.”
“I actually think that might be true,” Rose said with a smile, thinking of her limited pool of friends. “And if it is true, then I am very lucky to have such a good friend waiting for me, just when I need him.”
Frasier smiled. “So you will indulge me and let me show you my empire?”
“Have you got an empire?” Maddie asked him, as she sat down now in possession of every single felt-tip pen that the restaurant owned, completely oblivious of the scandalized looks of the waitress, as she began to draw.
“Well, I’ve got a gallery, some offices, and a shop,” Frasier said modestly.
“Not really an empire, is it?” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. “An empire is a ton of countries, enslaved by your mighty power. Not a shop and an office.”
“Fair point,” Frasier said.
• • •
Afterward, when he drove them home, Maddie fell asleep full of chips in the back of the car and was still slumbering as Frasier drew up in front of the B & B.
“I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, for our walk,” he said, leaning across and kissing Rose ever so lightly on the cheek.
• • •
Their walk the next day had been pleasant, under the sunshine, buffeted by the warm winds, with Maddie talking nonstop, inventing goblins and trolls and whispering ghosts around every turn and behind every weather-stunted tree. Rose had not said much, and neither had Frasier, but she had been content to be in his company as they made their way to one of the lesser peaks, he offering her his hand when they came to any tricky inclines, holding onto her fingers for perhaps just a moment longer than he needed to. And when they finally parted outside John’s house, everything had felt just as it should.
Yes, Rose discovered that she was rather happy to be confused and beguiled by Frasier McCleod, because even if Frasier was just being especially nice to the daughter of his best client, and Ted had just been in the midst of a passing crush, it was a good deal more pleasant and exciting than being the person she had been before. Than being Richard’s wife.
• • •
“See that dreamy look in your eye?” Shona declared mischievously, drawing Rose back into the present. “You’ve had that a lot recently. That’s definitely a thinking-about-a-man look. Which one is it? Ted, all young and keen; or Frasier, all unavailable and hand-holdy?”
“Don’t try and change the subject,” Rose said firmly, although the hint of a blush crept in her cheeks. The funny thing was Shona thought she had two men at her beck and call, and the real truth was that actually she had neither. “The point is, I’m not sure I can cope without you.”
“Don’t be a silly sod,” Shona said. “Don’t you get it? You’ve been coping without me since I got here. Rose, you don’t need anyone anymore.”
• • •
“Mum,” Maddie said with some gravity as Rose went downstairs to find her daughter waiting by the front door with her sketchbook tucked under her arm, “can we go now?”
“Go where?” Rose asked her, still out of sorts from hearing the news that Shona was leaving. Leaving her to live her life alone, for the first time since she was eighteen.
“To Granddad’s!” Maddie exclaimed.
“But we haven’t made a plan to go to Granddad’s today. He’s not expecting us,” Rose said. “I thought that really you and I haven’t seen each other that much since we got here. The weather looks like it might hold, so I thought we might go for a walk, or drive to one of the lakes, maybe get a boat?”
Maddie stared at her as if she’d just suggested taking a trip to the moon.
“We don’t need to arrange to see Granddad,” Maddie said. “We just need to go, and besides, we did walking yesterday. I want to go and see Granddad and paint.”
Rose sighed, uncertain what to do. The truth was she wanted to go and see John too. Their odd, both new and old relationship had reached a plateau of polite friendliness over the last few days, which she knew she would have to fight against if she wanted anything deeper from him. Rose hadn’t asked him any more difficult questions and he hadn’t appeared to mind her being there, which was about as close as they had come to any sort of obvious affection. When all of this had started, and Rose had found John here in the middle of nowhere, she’d thought that maybe that was enough. Now, though, with Shona about to leave her and sensing that the time she had to ignore Richard and his demands was quickly running out, Rose needed someone, and she discovered that she really wanted her dad.
The truth was, just being near him was reassuring in a way that Rose hadn’t experienced for so many years. She’d been so long without a parent that she’d underestimated her desire for that one person who would always be there to lean on, and yet that worried her. She didn’t want to start expecting more from John than he was able to give, and she didn’t want to start to need him in her life, not now, even though this was perhaps the time she needed him most. It was too dangerous to rely on a man like John now, when everything was so precariously balanced and when she was supposed to be standing on her own two feet. Shona had told her that she didn’t need anybody else, but Rose wasn’t at all sure about that. If anything, for most of the time she felt like a fraud, like a headless chicken who wasn’t so much getting her life together as just careering around making snap decisions based on very little common sense, mainly in an effort to avoid the fact that her old life, her dark, difficult bad life, had not vanished into thin air and would need to be confronted and concluded one day very soon.
And yet John was her father, and he was here, and he didn’t mind her coming. He especially didn’t mind Maddie, and in an odd way the developing relationship between the old man and the seven-year-old had improved Rose’s own connection with her daughter as well as her father. The pressure between mother and child to support each other had been eased, and both of them sensed that release of tension and welcomed it.
John was part of her life now, and whatever came next, whether he would let her know more of him or not, Rose knew that she wouldn’t want to go back to the way things were before she found him.
“OK,” Rose said, smiling at the thought of another afternoon in the barn with her family, “let’s go and see Granddad and see what he’s up to today.”
• • •
They had been about to get in the car when Rose spotted Ted striding down the street towards them. Thinking that he might have been about to come and see her, Rose lifted her hand and waved at him.
“Hello!”
Ted stopped dead, examined her standing with her hand waving hesitantly in the air, and, turning on his heel, walked purposefully in the other direction without even acknowledging that he’d seen her. That confirmed it, then: he definitely was avoiding her, and Rose couldn’t really blame him.
You silly fool, Rose thought to herself, letting yourself get carried away on the spur of the moment, and now you’ve upset Ted.
“Ted pretended not to see you,” Maddie said with her usual inclination towards clarity. “He must not like you anymore. It’s just like when Lucy and Caroline stopped playing with me at school, and then everyone else did too.”
“Horrible Lucy and Caroline,” Rose said, feeling jangled and confused as she watched Ted walk away. “Who wants to be friends with them anyway?”
“I wouldn’t
have minded,” Maddie said, a touch wistfully, before adding, “Oh, well, come on, then, let’s go and see Granddad.”
• • •
Maddie was rattling the barn door and finding it locked.
“He’s not in here!” Maddie said with some consternation. “Where is he, then, if he’s not in here? He’s always in here.”
“Well,” Rose said as she reached the locked barn door, “I suppose he can’t live in the barn. Let’s go and see if he’s in the cottage. You know, we didn’t check with him that he would be in. He might have gone out.”
“Granddad doesn’t go out,” Maddie said firmly, very sure of the facts, and Rose had to admit that he had certainly given that impression since she’d first visited him. She had only ever seen him outside the confines of Storm Cottage once, when he had come to see her at the B & B, and for some reason she couldn’t imagine him just deciding to take an impromptu trip.
Maddie raced up the path, discovering at once that the door to Storm Cottage was unlocked, which didn’t mean anything. Rose hadn’t known it to be locked since she’d arrived, and she was fairly sure that if John had gone out he would still have left it that way. When they walked into the kitchen and living area, the cottage was still and silent, a pattern of leaves, their shadows cast by the midday sun, dancing cheerfully on the flagstones. A half-empty pint of sour milk sat on the table, and a pair of ancient-looking paint-spattered boots stood at the foot of the stairs.
“He’s in! Granddad!” Maddie yelled, pointing at the boots. “Granddad!”
“Shhh,” Rose said, getting the distinct feeing that she was trespassing as she looked around for any signs of her father.
“Why?” Maddie said, the pitch of her voice seeming at odds with the dusty quiet of the little house. “If he’s not here he won’t know I’m shouting, and if he is he will hear us.”
“Well, I don’t think he is in, so—” A dull thud came from above their heads.
“Granddad!” Maddie said, on the verge of racing up the stairs.
“Hold on!” Rose said, halting her in her tracks. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure what it was, but whatever it might be, she didn’t want Maddie to be the first person to find out. “He might be in the loo, or in bed or . . .” dead drunk, after realizing that finding his daughter again was just too much for him to take, Rose thought with a sense of foreboding. “Wait here and I’ll go and have a look.”
“But I don’t want to.” Maddie started for the stairs.
“Maddie!” Rose must have said her name with more authority than either of them was used to because instead of bolting up the stairs as she usually would, Maddie came back and plonked herself down at the kitchen table, folding her arms and pouting.
Taking a breath, Rose climbed the rickety, steep staircase, all sorts of visions of what she might find up there racing through her mind: her father passed out with a bottle of vodka cradled in his arms; or in bed with the “someone” who did his shopping and goodness knew what else. Or maybe not John at all, maybe just some particularly big and carnivorous rat.
“John?” Rose called out in barely more than a whisper, as she got to the top of the stairs. “Are you in?”
There was no reply, no further thuds or scrapes that might have been her father or outsized rodents. Advancing slowly, Rose pushed open the door to the bathroom. It was empty. Briefly she peered through the crack in the boxroom door. Almost all of the clutter that had been in there when she’d first arrived was gone, and the little room, although still only just big enough for a single bed, seemed bright and airy. Certain that John was not here, and that the thud had just been the old house making its presence known, Rose pushed open John’s bedroom door, just to be on the safe side, before going back downstairs.
It was then that she realized John was in bed, or half in it, at least. Rose clapped both her hands over her mouth as she allowed herself a moment to take in what she saw. He seemed to have fallen—no, collapsed—out of bed, his long legs still tangled in the sheets, while his torso lay twisted on the floor, his head turned away from her towards the wall, his skin starkly white in the buttercup summer sunshine.
“John!” Rose whispered, falling to her knees on the floor next to him, feeling like the little girl at her mother’s bedside again. “John?”
Rose let out a long, audible breath of relief as John turned his head to look at her, but the feeling didn’t last for long. His face was sallow, his eyes sunken, ringed in black. How long had he been there?
The sharp scent in the air, the dampness on the edge of his rumpled sheet, made her worry that it was for a very long time.
“Are you drunk?” Rose asked him, withdrawing her hand in a moment of mistrust.
“Rose . . .” John winced, and Rose could see it hurt him to breathe and to talk. “Dizzy spell, useless old bones. I tried to get up, fell, I think I’ve hurt my back. Can’t move.”
“Your back? How long have you been here?” Rose said, her hand fluttering above her father, not sure where or how to touch him, or what to do next. “Why did this happen? Have you been drinking?”
“No!” John said with as much energy as he could muster. “Not even water. Thirsty . . . Been here since about five, feel so bloody stupid.”
“Let me help you up.” Rose tried hooking her arms under his, used to picking up her wisp of a mother from an early age, but even though he looked so thin and frail, she couldn’t budge him. The more she tried, the more it hurt him.
“I’m so sorry, John, I can’t do this alone,” Rose said desperately. “I need to get help.”
“There’s a number . . .”
“I’ll call an ambulance—” Rose began.
“No, no!” John used what little strength he had to be insistent. “There’s a number on the pad by the bed. Call that.”
“Who is it?” Rose said, kneeling up and reaching for the pad. She knew enough to know it was a Keswick number. “Your doctor?”
“No,” John wheezed. “No goddamn doctors. They never do anything.”
“Who, then?” Rose asked him anxiously. John seemed to hold his breath for what felt like the longest time, before he answered on a painful outward gasp.
“Tilda,” he said, breathing the name on a long ragged outward breath. “She knows. She knows what to do.”
Chapter
Thirteen
The sight of Tilda standing at her father’s front door brought Rose up short, catching her breath as she was confronted with the villain of so much of her life. How many nights had she gone to sleep blaming this woman for ruining her life? How many mornings had she woken up wishing her ill? For most of her life Rose had thought of Tilda as the thief of her happiness, and yet here she was, John’s first port of call in an emergency, and looking no more menacing than any other slightly bohemian woman in her sixties.
“How is he?” Tilda asked as Rose awkwardly stood aside to let her in, then followed her to the foot of the stairs. Even if she hadn’t had such limited experience in handling awkward social situations, Rose was pretty sure she would still have found this almost impossible. After her short, surreal telephone conversation with Tilda, which did not seem to rattle the older woman at all, Rose had carefully lifted John’s legs out of the bed and put a pillow under his head to make him at least a little more comfortable. She’d sat on the floor next to him, neither of them speaking as she fed him sips of water from a glass by the bed, just as she had done so many times for her mother, stroking her hair as Marian sobbed herself dry of tears, even though she could scarcely remember why anymore.
“When Mum was very bad,” Rose said, “sometimes I’d find her out of it on the floor—so often, actually, that it sort of became normal. Get in from school, have a drink of juice, pick Mum up off the floor, put her in bed. I could do it with her; there was nothing to her. I’m sorry I can’t lift you.”
“You really have nothing to be sorry for,” John said, looking a little better now that he’d had a drink. “I’m t
he one who should be sorry. I want to be the one to look after you for once, not the other way round.”
“I don’t need looking after.” Rose said it reflexively, exactly as she had said it to her mother, discovering only after she had spoken the words that they felt true. “I just need to be with you, to be part of a family. That’s enough for me, more than enough. Now’s the time of my life when I should be standing on my own two feet at last, making a future with Maddie. Looking after myself.”
It had seemed like an age that they had sat there, side by side, but the knock at the door had still come all too soon for Rose.
“Don’t hate her,” John said as she got up to answer the door. “None of this is her fault.”
Rose had said nothing.
“As well as can be expected,” Rose said to Tilda now. “What’s wrong with him? Has he been drinking again? He doesn’t smell of it, but . . . I just want to know what’s going on. I am his daughter.”
Rose looked over to where Maddie was sitting on the sofa, her eyes watchful and wary.
Tilda did not reply, her hand on the banister, clearly eager to be with John, to help him. She stilled herself, though, knowing that she couldn’t just ignore Rose.
“It’s nice to see you, Rose,” she said carefully. “I appreciate that this must be hard for you. I know John hadn’t told you that we are still . . . in touch. If it helps, I can tell you that having you back in his life has made him happier than I’ve seen him for a long time. Not that it’s that easy to tell the difference.”
Tilda hazarded a tiny smile at her attempt at a joke, but Rose found it impossible to reciprocate.
She opened her mouth to speak, then swiftly closed it again. No words would come out. There was nothing that she could think of to say, her mind still too busy processing all this new information.
Tilda, it seemed, was still her father’s secret, his bit on the side. Rose had never asked what had happened to her because she had assumed that her father’s most destructive lover had fallen along the wayside with all the other detritus that he left in his wake. But she had been wrong. He had merely kept Tilda’s presence from her. He’d lied to her again after all this time.
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